Humility in Leadership: Why Great Leaders Hold the Door

When I was in high school, I wasn't very including of my younger brother. I kept him at a distance. I was too cool, he wasn't cool enough. Of course, all that's stupid and false in my head now.

If I'm honest about what I did, I shut the door on him. I shut the door on including him, inviting him in, and making a place for him. It makes me sad. If I could go back and do it over again, I'd have had a blast hanging out with him. It was my own insecurities that got in the way.

Last Wednesday on my YouTube Live I kicked off a new series, Seven Humilities That Make You Great. It starts with a very old saying I love a whole lot: "Whoever wants to be great among you must become a servant."

Some of you hate that saying. You think the way you get where you want to go is kicking the door down, proving yourself, a little humble-bragging. And some of you like it a little too much, because it sounds like permission to be a wallflower. You don't want to risk being invalidated, so you don't put the idea out there and you don't speak up in the meeting. Neither one is what this is about.

It doesn't mean you give up the ambition. It's a reframing of the ambition: you lead for impact, not validation. And the first humility is simple. You open the door. You hold the door. You do the opposite of what I did to my brother.

Most of us don't know which way we drift under pressure until somebody shows us. Do you kick the door down, or do you hide behind it?

Here's the hard part. You can't hold the door for others until you learn to hold it for yourself. You can't give what you don't have. If you're waiting on the person over you to finally hold the door for you, they can't, because they don't know how to hold it for themselves.

So here's the practice for this week. Think of one person you've kept on the other side of the door. The coworker you wrote off. The new hire who isn't your kind of people. The family member you keep at arm's length. Holding the door doesn't mean you say yes to everybody. Some doors should stay shut. Ask yourself what you're protecting by keeping them out.

The Identity Fear Quotient® (IFQ®) shows you which way you reach under pressure, and why.

Take the IFQ®